The Case of the Shrinking Comet and the Age of the Universe

Ten years after launching, the European Space Agency Rosetta spacecraft finally caught up to its target, Comet 67P. Rosetta, now 250 million miles from Earth, will travel along with the comet while it makes its way around the Sun measuring its activity as it goes through the process of forming a tail. Already Rosetta has detected and measured streams of water vapor spewing out of the comet at an estimated rate of 600 millilitres per second.

An overexposed image of Comet 67P showing jets of water vapor emanating from the comet. Image: ESA

This water loss from the comet seems to have inspired Institute for Creation Research (ICR) science writer, Brian Thomas, to crunch some numbers to estimate the lifespan of this comet. Where his calculator leads him is to the conclusion that Comet 67P can’t be billions or even millions of years old. Here is his argument from an article entitled: European Spacecraft’s Comet Close-up a World First.

… first measurements from the Microwave Instrument for the Rosetta Orbiter, MIRO, suggested that the comet was emitting water vapour into space at about 300 millilitres per second,” according to the ESA.

That’s over six-thousand gallons per day! At that rate, the whole comet—assuming it’s made entirely of water ice—would melt into space after only hundreds of thousands years. The dumbbell-shaped mass spans two and a half miles across its longest axis. If this comet was really a “primitive building block of the Solar System,” then it’s supposedly 4.5 billion years old. Why is it still around if it keeps getting smaller as it swings around the sun every six and a half years?

Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko’s mass shrinks not only from water-vapor loss, but solar wind also blows away material as it orbits nearer the sun—between Earth and Mars when it’s closest. If it’s really billions of years old, why isn’t this comet old, cold, and dead—why does it exist at all? Rosetta’s investigation has not yet entered full swing, and already reveals the comet as looking young, warm, and alive.

It seems clear enough. All it takes is simple math to come to this simple conclusion. If the comet is shedding mass every time is passes by the Sun then it should eventually disappear. Thomas says that should take only several hundred thousand years. I’m not sure about his math here but clearly he is on the right track. At 6000 gallons a day, this comet can’t last billions of years.

Why then are secular scientists not able to see the obvious truth? The Universe and the Earth are far younger than most believe.

There are many reasons, but the most important is these is one that Thomas should have known about had he done any amount of background research on this comet before writing his article. For Thomas to say that the comet can’t be 4.5 billion years old he must hold a false assumption. He assumes the orbit that brings the comet close to the Sun today is the orbit that the comet has always been in. In other words, he assumes a strict form of uniformitarianism to do his calculations. If the orbit were not the same then the amount of material being expelled from the comet would have changed over time and he could not calculate how long the comet would survive.

Here is the key question then – is there evidence that the orbit of this comet has changed in the past? A quick Google search will tell you that there is. Here is what NASA says about this history of this comet:

Analysis of the comet’s orbital evolution indicates that until the mid-19th century, the closest it got to the Sun was 4.0 AU (about 373 million miles or 600 million kilometers), which is roughly two-thirds of the way from Mars’ orbit to that of Jupiter. That far from the Sun’s heat, it would not sprout a coma or tails, so it was invisible from Earth.

But scientists calculate that in 1840, a fairly close encounter with Jupiter must have sent the comet flying deeper into the inner solar system, down to about 3.0 AU (about 280 million miles or 450 million kilometers) from the Sun. Churyumov-Gerasimenko’s (67P) perihelion (closest approach to the Sun) drifted a bit closer to the Sun over the next century, and then Jupiter gave the comet another gravitational kick in 1959. Since then, the comet’s perihelion has stood at about 1.3 AU, which is about 27 million miles (43 million kilometers) outside Earth’s orbit.

So, as recently as 1840 the closest this comet got to the Sun was 373 million miles but now it comes a bit closer than 120 million miles from the Sun. In 1840 most of the comets orbit would have been spent much further way than 373 million miles and have been so cold that it effectively expelled no water at all. Had we used Thomas’ method of calculation in the year 1840 we would have estimated that the comet may live for another billion years.

This shows the path that Rosetta has taken to catch up to Comet 67P. Rosetta has circled the Sun multiple times using the gravity of Earth, and Mars to help speed it on its way out to meet with the comet. The trip has taken 10 years. I still find it amazing that we can put something in orbit around a 1 mile diameter object almost 300 million miles away.

But how do we know the orbit has changed in the past when no person was there to document the change? We can know this with great confidence because we have a good understanding of Newtonian mechanics. Laws of the effects of mass, gravity and motion can be used to trace the orbit of this comet back in time along with the orbits of the planets. Doing so shows us that in 1959 the orbit came close to Jupiter. We can calculate based on the mass of the comet and Jupiter what the effects would have been on both orbits. Sound impossible? Consider that we have sent a spacecraft to Jupiter by sling-shooting it around Earth and Mars and then have directed it around Jupiter for a decade. We can very precisely predict the path of objects in motion in space which is why we know when we will see other comets like Halley’s comet again. The Rosetta spacecraft itself was sent on a wild set of orbits to get to the comet all calculated using Newtonian principles.

This is not rocket science! :-) These are fairly straightforward calculations. If the orbit calculations are anywhere close to reality there is every reason to believe that this comet could have survived quite happily in the outer solar system for billions of years. This and other comets that come close to the Sun are not evidence of a young creation. If they tell us anything about the age of the Universe they tell us they are products of ancient processes. See also: As the Asteroid Tumbles: Asteroids and the Age of the Solar System

The calculations that lead us to that conclusion are not quite as simple as those performed by Thomas but he should have realized that the orbit of a comet would not be expected to be the same over time since there are large planets whose gravity will affect it. It appears that Thomas has yet again managed to demonstrate his unwillingness to do basic background research before writing an article or worse yet keep his audience in the dark about something he knows contradicts his message. This is a disservice to his audience and reflects poorly on the credibility of ICR as self-proclaimed source of science information for evangelical Christians.

By making it sound like the existence of this comet should be a mystery to astronomers and that this should cast doubt on the age of the Universe, what Thomas has written is not a science story but rather a science fiction story.

Last we saw Mr. Thomas he was telling us that a layer of pebbles buried 770 feet below the Dead Sea was evidence of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah (Origins of the Dead Sea: All Dried Up – No Room for a Dry Dead Sea in the Young Earth Timeline). There we discovered that he hadn’t done sufficient background research to discover that articles published by his own organization contradicted his claims. Those of us that read Mr. Thomas’ work will recognize that these examples aren’t simply rare lapses in attention to detail but rather they represent a longstanding pattern of misreading sources, not reading sources, or simply making up hypotheses to fit stories with no regard to their plausibility.

I understand that the focus of Thomas’ job is to provide an alternative way to interpret current news stories to fit a young earth paradigm, and so I don’t expect him to admit or believe that the data don’t support his overall worldview. But it is one thing to have a different interpretation of facts, and it is another to be unaware of basic information necessary to understanding a story, which invariably leads to a wrong interpretation of the evidence. Unfortunately, Thomas is a trusted authority for many Christians who are looking for evidence that science supports their young-earth interpretation of the Bible. That trust would seem to be misplaced.

That misplaced trust can be seen on the Facebook comments section of ICR, AIG or CMI when so many of those comments confidently use YEC arguments that Thomas and others have provided to chastise other Christians. One comment that really stuck out to me (unfortunately I didn’t copy it at the time) proclaimed “astronomers are idiots for believing the Universe is ancient because a simple calculator will show them that it is young.” This was made in clear reference to Thomas’ article on Comet 67P. This person trusts that Thomas is doing good science and presenting them with not only facts but good interpretations of those facts. A frustrating comment, yes, but I’m sympathetic to that person’s plight. They want to believe they have physical evidence for something they already believe must be true – that the earth is young. What I have less sympathy and more frustration for are individuals that are in a position of authority who place those who trust them in the position of looking foolish when they repeat their unjustified claims.

The ends don’t justify the means. God is not glorified by poor scholarship. At times, I have been too quick in my assessment of data. I have not done my due diligence in reading the original research articles before I comment on them or use them to support my position. I have been quick to criticize without questioning my own assumptions. When that has happened no good has come of it. Each time I do so, I have lost some of the trust of those that look to me to provide accurate reporting and to provide analysis that is based on thorough background research.

Our recognition of God’s glory in creation is blunted when we seek to distort its message even if we believe that we are doing so for the right reasons. I am sure that many YECs believe I am the one that is engaged in distortion. I don’t think so for many reasons that I have discussed on this blog. But I do pray that I would be faithful in my studies of God’s creation. That I would glorify God through my love of His Word and His creation. And if that is not the case, that He would reveal my errors to me and lovingly discipline me.

The dumbbell shaped Comet 67P. The Rosetta satellite is presently orbiting this comet as is passes around the Sun. Image: Planetary Society/ESA

Trackbacks

[…] The Case of the Shrinking Comet and the Age of the Universe- Does the rate of water loss on comets like the one Rosetta landed on mean the universe must be young? Here, an argument from the Institute for Creation Research is analyzed. […]

[…] I don’t know how many people tested his statements, but from some of the rhetoric I’ve read concerning this false teaching, quite a few people accepted what he said as fact, without practicing any discernment whatsoever. (For one careful test of Thomas’ article, and many others, see this article on Naturalis Historia.) […]